Chapter Eighteen
TYLER
After Sunny’s first training session, she asked if she could come on a weekly basis to continue.
Obviously I’d never turn her down. Since then, she’s spent the last few weeks coming in with each of us, training and learning more on self-defense while getting stronger.
This helps me give her an ounce of leverage to protect herself in the moments I’m not there to protect her—without crossing any lines.
Somehow, I’m fucking nervous tonight, because it’ll be just us. Cole and Anthony won’t be here as a buffer between us.
I wanted to prep before she came here, so I sent a trusted car service to pick her up. A slip of a hundred dollar bill and a threat that if he doesn’t get my girl here safely were enough to send him down the road without another word.
Wrapping my hands, I hear the door open as she walks in. Don’t fuck this up Tyler. Had she been any other woman, things would’ve been very different. But it’s Sunny.
Her trust is already fragile, and she’s willing enough to trust someone like me, despite the fact she’s had a glimpse into the person I can be. I’m already hers. In order to make her mine, I have to be cautious, meticulous, and dare I say, gentle.
She’s still wearing her scrubs, and I can’t help but think how completely devastating she is in them. She’s turning me on while simultaneously making me an uneasy wreck.
Do not fucking get a hard on, Tyler.
That damn little fire in her has ignited a series of new kinks in me which are slowly burning down the foundation of who I am that I worked so hard for.
The man who hacked a widely secured database, breaching the confidentiality of so many employees just to find this girl, can’t even control his dick.
All she has done is waltz in wearing goddamn scrubs.
“Hey!” she chimes, closing the door behind her. “I’m just going to change really quickly.” She heads for the bathrooms.
Nodding, I watch her as my heart thrums against my chest.
She observes the place around her, eyes wider than normal with giddiness as if she’s seeing it for the first time. “I really love this place.”
“It’s one of my favorite places,”
“Thank you for sharing it with me.” Then she heads to the bathroom.
A grueling few minutes later, she emerges, making me more undone than when she walked in wearing her scrubs. Despite the chill of the October air, she chose black shorts that keep almost nothing a secret. Only further adding my dick’s protests with a little cropped black shirt.
“Does this work?” she asks.
I give a twirling motion with my finger for her to spin around. She laughs, giving me a slow turn, showing the flex of her leg muscles, the grip the shorts have on her ass, the narrowing of her waist that spills into curves on her hips.
Of course it fucking works.
“Absolutely.” I gesture for her to come to the punching bag.
Just a mere week prior, I admitted the one thing I didn’t even realize was happening while she slept in my arms. It changed everything.
I’m ready to make her mine, and that’s going to start tonight.
SUNNY
I’m panting.
Hard.
A sheen of sweat coats my body as I watch Tyler on top of me, pinning my arms down. I feel my heart in my throat at the sight, wondering how the hell I got here. Though I honestly don’t mind.
It just kind of happened.
Looking up at him, my chest rises and falls fast underneath his. A feline smile spreads across his face with a tilt of his head. He is like the night sky, so tragically beautiful and you don’t even know why.
“See, you were in a vulnerable position, and it was easy for me to reverse the roles,” he says, still pinning my hands with one of his own while the other rests on the floor beside my head.
He’s straddling my waist, and I try to ignore the generous parts of him I feel very close to the hyper aware parts of mine. He may have won this round, but I’ve managed to win the rest. Prior to this loss, I had him pinned to the ground while I straddled his waist.
Apparently that isn’t just a vulnerable vantage point for my dreams at night, but also in a fighting ring. While I sat pridefully on top of him, he managed to flip me on my back. Somehow my mind started wishing we were naked in the process.
I’ve unfortunately grown accustomed to these thoughts that frequent my mind, chalking it up to the fact that he’s devastatingly beautiful, and I haven’t gotten laid in months.
“Get. Off.” I scowl.
He doesn’t move, and his smile grows wider. “You would be the first woman to complain about me being on top of them.”
“Do you do this position with all the girls you bring home?” I taunt. He rolls his eyes, but he doesn’t say no, and he doesn’t say yes. All he gives me is that damn crooked smile.
“Okay,” Tyler hauls himself off me, avoiding my question entirely. He grabs my arm and pulls me off the ground, sending me into a dizzy spell.
Chuckling, he places a stabilizing hand on my waist and that shit ignites a fire in my veins. It’s nearly impossible to cool down at this point. Being here, all over one another’s bodies, sweaty—it’s doing something inside me. A brief glimpse of what only my own mind can conjure up.
“Let’s go to the punching bag and teach you how to hit some more.” He places a guiding hand on my sweaty back.
“I think considering my shot with Ryan, I did a pretty good job at hitting.”
“Okay, so you did some damage. Now, I want to teach you proper technique so that you are prepared.” He places his hands on the punching bag. “You want to make sure your feet are planted and firm on the ground and you want to brace your core with each punch.”
There is something fundamentally different about him tonight. I can’t quite figure out what it is. All I know is that the predator is long gone, and dare I say it leaves something vulnerable in him.
“Sunny?”
“Yeah?”
“You know, it would make teaching you a lot easier if you weren’t staring at my lips every time I spoke. I mean, I can make all those curious thoughts go away by one simple action.” He smirks.
There you are.
Leaning in, he braces his hands on the punching bag. The only barrier between us.
“Who says I was staring at your lips?” I ask, crossing my arms.
There’s no escaping this, but I’ll at least play along, like we always do with one another. Flirtatious banter isn’t unfamiliar territory for us, but for some reason, tonight feels different.
“Your eyes.” He leans an inch closer.
“And you know me so well that you can read my eyes?” I take a step closer, slowly closing the space between us.
We can’t…but god I want to.
“I’ve been trying to navigate you for awhile, Sunny.”
“Why?” I whisper.
He licks his lips. “Because I can’t get you out of my fucking head.” He takes a step closer. My heart beats frantically in anticipation.
“W-We’re friends…we…we can’t.” I say, but the lie is prevalent as soon as it leaves my lips. It’s breathless, needy and desperate.
Yet he takes another step into me. Those green eyes igniting with feral desire so wild that my heart skips a beat. He’s so close, that the scent of citrus and salt become the very oxygen I breathe. I can practically taste him on my lips, only fueling that need to reach out for him.
“Friendship over.” He grabs the back of my neck and pulls me in.
It starts as a whisper, a gentle brush against my lips seeking permission. Each gentle press is a whisper of words that can only be spoken like this. And I’m still trying to decipher the meaning.
So, I part my lips, allowing him in. He unleashes the predator who’s been caged from this moment for so long.
His mouth captures mine, greeting me with the sweet mint of his taste. His kiss becomes fierce, possessive, wanting. A small moan leaves his throat as our mouths meet.
Letting go of the punching bag, he cradles my face with both hands while my fists ball in his shirt, fighting the urge to rip it off. We stumble back a few steps as his body collides with mine, but it does nothing to stop the talent of his tongue twining with mine.
His hands roam down my body, digging his fingers in my hips as he tugs me closer. While urgent, his hands are meticulous and gentle as they explore my body, like he’s memorized it for this very purpose. As if he can anticipate each of my needs without ever knowing them.
Tyler possessively devours me, making me submit to him.
Grabbing my neck, he pushes his tongue with delicate precision, knowing exactly how to navigate my mouth in a way that has my toes curling.
Instinctively, I cradle his face, unwilling to let him pull away as a small moan leaves my mouth, eliciting one from him.
He is good at this. He knows exactly what he’s doing. I wonder how he could’ve been so nervous when he’s doing all the right things.
Temptation to cross that thin line between us catches fire in my body. The next thing I know, his hands are under my thighs, sweeping me off my feet as I straddle his waist, pressing our chests together.
He carries me to the front desk, setting me down so we can be face to face without removing his mouth from mine once in the process.
A smile plays on my lips when I feel the generous part of him getting hard beneath his sweatpants. Pressing myself harder against him, I tighten my legs around him, making him let out a deep, rattled moan.
“Be careful, Sunny,” he warns. “You like to play games.” He presses kisses along my jaw. “But so do I.”
As he works his way down my neck, I feel an invisible branding on my skin that I don’t think I’ll ever be able to scrub off. Just as his lips almost meet the tender flesh of my scar, he pauses. His eyes fall to the stark pink skin while two fingers gently touch it.
It’s my daily reminder.
My body belonged more to Ryan than it had myself for far too long. Because of that, I’ve only ever been okay with physical touch if I instigated it. I haven’t been okay with a man’s touch like this since. Yet, with Tyler, he’s the only man I feel okay with when he touches me.
He gently places his lips on the scar—the one I can barely bring myself to touch. And I like it. It doesn’t hurt so much with him.
My breath hitches, but it doesn’t stop him from placing a hand around my throat and pulling me back to his lips. I trace the ropes of muscles in his arms, feeling the grooves of scars along them. He catches my wrist, practically ripping it from his forearm.
“Do they hurt you?” I ask. “Do your scars hurt you, too?”
The predator in him is alive, pacing inside his mind as his eyes frantically search mine. All he does is swallow hard, not saying anything as he watches me.
Grabbing the bottom of his shirt, I pull it up over his head, slowly. He doesn’t stop me. Not when more scars are bared across his abdomen and chest. Not when the shirt drops to the floor in a pool of fabric. Not when his beautiful, scarred body is finally bare to me, like it’s his very heart.
His eyes don’t leave mine, searching me for a reaction, like I’ll cower away, scared by them. By him. But I don’t.
My fingers dance along them, noting how different each is. From white, pink, and red—jagged, clean lines, and circles that appear to be cigarette or cigar burns. I trace my finger down a raised, pink scar along his chest. He winces as his head tilts back slightly, but he lets me.
He lets me.
“What do you do when you’re making love to a woman, and she touches these?” I ask, meeting his eyes.
“I don’t make love, Sunny. I fuck.” There is no mirth behind his eyes, no malice wrapped in each word.
“Mmm. And let me guess, you keep them tied up?” That earns me a smile.
“More often than not,” he teases. Removing my hand, I try to hide my own smile. He catches my wrist, stopping me. “It hurts when people touch my scars. Not physically, but my entire fucking being. With you, it doesn’t hurt so much.”
I can understand that.
He presses a gentle kiss to the inside of my palm while watching me. I cradle his face, my thumb strokes the scar that pierces through his lips, and then press my own against them.
It just feels right.
Our breathing becomes heavy and the air between us becomes thick with desire. Yet, somehow, I feel like I can finally breathe. Like I’ve been suffocating, and he finally gave me oxygen.
My legs tighten around him as my need grows deeper. Feeling him against me is only a prelude to all the desires running rampant through my mind. His mouth around my nipples. His hands through my hair. His thrusts wild and unhinged as he pushes into me.
“Baby…” he whispers.
Just as we tread that fine line—where we both may have gone over the edge, a car door shuts and headlights shine into the gym, stopping us.
Tyler unwillingly pulls himself from me. His hands brace the counter I sit on as a barricade for whatever is outside. A glance over his shoulder has his jaw flexing when he sees who interrupts us. Turning back to me, his eyes fall to my lips then back to my eyes.
“It’s Sam and the rest of the family,” he says.
His eyes dart back and forth on my face, searching for whatever I’m thinking at this moment. And I’m not. I’m not thinking.
Biting my swollen lip, I contemplate. I actually contemplate it.
He stares at me, the eagerness in his eyes growing as our family walks closer to the entrance of the training center. The hope that is growing into a flame only to be dwindled by my next words.
I can’t like you, Tyler.
“To be continued,” I finally say.
The words are opposite of what I should have said. What I need to say. How could this be continued? It cannot be continued.
Swallowing hard, he nods with a smirk. “To be continued.”